July 18, 2024
As a market leader for crops around the world, bad actors in the industry have attempted to counterfeit many Syngenta products that growers know and trust. When growers buy seed with a Syngenta logo, they anticipate high quality seed that contains the genetics they hand-selected for their unique growing and marketing conditions.
If bad actors in the industry falsify seed labels and provide sub-par products to unsuspecting customers, that promise of quality growers expect from Syngenta seed falls short because the counterfeit product doesn’t undergo the same stringent testing and research we provide.
Left unchecked, falsified seed products could wreak havoc on production and even lead to food shortages. At Syngenta, our teams, including dedicated product security teams against counterfeiting, around the world are working to provide more certainty to growers with specialized, verifiable labels that prove our products are authentic and backed by industry-leading research and testing.
With these verifications in place, and by working closely with Syngenta field representatives, our growers can plant with confidence, knowing the seed they’re using is backed by quality testing, research, and more.
Brazil Growers Share Concerns from F2 Counterfeit Seed
One of the ways counterfeit sellers create seed is by saving seed—creating F2s, which are lower quality than the verified F1 types sold by Syngenta. There’s no quality control in harvesting, no testing, and the genetics are unstable and not pure.
For example, Manchester seeded watermelon is the most popular variety in Brazil and there can be surplus demand. Over the past few years, there have been documented instances of counterfeit Manchester seed, leaving growers with inferior crops and retailers and consumers dissatisfied.
“Each time saved seed is used, the quality of the crop decreases, and you see segregation whereby fruit will start to look like one or the other parent,” said Alecio Schiavon, Syngenta Vegetable Seeds Senior Product Development Specialist for Cucurbit in Brazil and Paraguay. “Furthermore, because the people who are saving and re-selling seed aren’t as stringent as Syngenta is for seed health testing and seed storage, it’s easy for seed health concerns to arise.
“Major diseases such as Bacterial Fruit Blotch and Gummy Stem Blight can develop on the seeds without the grower’s knowledge, resulting in quarantines on production fields, lost crops, and ultimately lost income.” -Alecio Schiavon, Syngenta Vegetable Seeds Senior Product Development Specialist
Saved seeds represent significant quality risks to growers because of reduced marketable yield, and retail and consumer dissatisfaction with a subpar product.
Creating Labels that Prove Authentic, Verifiable Seed Products
In Europe, counterfeit labels and seed packaging are becoming more common in certain countries. In Russia, the issue is becoming more widespread, and growers who purchase the inauthentic seed are experiencing disappointing crop germination and overall poor productivity compared to authentic products.
The team started with watermelon, where the most popular hybrid was frequently falsified and needed a way to prove authenticity. By working with other colleagues around the world, they identified a technology that creates a double QR code. Essentially, it’s one QR code inside of another.
With this addition to packaging, where only a few printers in the world are actually capable of producing, it makes copying the labels nearly impossible. This initiative has been in place since 2019 for the most popular hybrids in that market.
Today, growers in selected markets can check their labels to ensure authenticity. By scanning the QR code and checking it with the associated application, they can be sure the seed they’re planting is authentic and backed by Syngenta’s expertise and testing. In addition, falsified QR codes get detected and alerted, initiating investigation by Syngenta’s product security teams. To date, thousands of users have used the app, and it has detected more than 2,000 counterfeit products and alerted growers so they can avoid planting inferior products.
In Pakistan, counterfeit and smuggled products are also a widespread problem.
“It started with the crops that have the largest acreage in Pakistan,” said Faizan Siddiqui, Pakistan Customer Experience Specialist. “But the problem is really growing, and we see it in all crops now-including smuggled seed or saved F2 seed. That’s why we started using counterfeiting detection technologies.”
In Pakistan, we’re working with a company with extensive experience in anti-counterfeiting, so their experience in anti-counterfeiting is vast. Because of this, the labels on Syngenta products have multiple layers of protection for growers. These layers include:
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Non-removable labels: a simple, but effective anti-counterfeiting measure includes multiple slits on the label so if it’s pulled off, it gets stripped into small pieces.
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Shadow design: a sort-of watermark on the back of the label that is holographic and includes the Syngenta logo in a unique format.
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QR codes: these can be checked in the Syngenta CropWise app to ensure authenticity of the product.
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And more! There are other tools within the label that help prove authenticity – but some of those remain hidden to avoid replication.
Plus, the team redesigns the labels frequently to avoid the chances of duplication by those who would benefit from falsified products.
Learn More About Seed Authenticity
Every country handles seed verification differently, and it’s important growers reach out to local Syngenta representatives to better understand what to look for in seed packaging. Find your local representative here.
From seed conditioning to quality testing to the genetics contained, it’s important growers get the seed they need and the seed they paid for. Syngenta works tirelessly to produce the best seed products in terms of genetics that match growing conditions, disease and pest-free seed, seed treatment, quality packaging, and more.
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